make pvp free to the public?

there are ways to address the eliteness issue

1) to kill the elite....it is just killing the format..
2) to shorten the time for newbie to become an elite....it will just make the arena a teaching ground, but not a competitive ground
3) to recruit more outside elite.. to make the arena only an elite arena. which is supposingly the case.. competition.. the stronger stays, and win.

I think the 3rd one is the easiest and best option.

Right, the newbie gets into the team but still doesn't know what to do resulting in loss. The team will then ritualistic-ly disband after the loss and eventually people will just stop forming PuG groups altogether making HA even more dead.

<essay>

HoM is what really killed PvP since PvErs have no incentives to find themselves a teacher and get better at PvP role and what to do in different situations as you would find (pay) a teacher to teach you how to fill a role in a UWSC team and where to go/what to do.

The elitism in GvG/HA is also the same as in UWSC - rank vs summoning stones; the solution for new UWSCers? They go and find themselves a UWSC guild of like-minded-people in their situation who are willing to practice and get summoning stones (and experience). Similarly, those who REALLY want to HA/GvG would find like-minded players and form a guild and find (pay) someone come along and teach them.

However, as there they only require the buyable Zrank for HoM, there is no incentive for PvErs to try out GvG/HA and the risk/rewards just aren't worth it since PvE is so much more profitable and confers more advantages in the long run (GW2). So you see more people willing to take steps to become better Speed Clearers than PvPers.

</essay>

There are 3 ways to get into a team.
1. Have the required rank.
2. Know someone on the team.
3. Be a 'famous' PvPer.

Rank discrimination is not a problem. People need to realise PvP is a highly social thing. If you want to get in a good teams and win, you need to socialise, build a friendlist and stop playing with random, clueless people. They will not make you better or help you win.

And don't say you can't make friends, if you can't, I suggest going out for some practise in real life. I can't believe this discussion is still being made...


Ontopic;
A new influx of PvP players is the best thing that could happen to PvP right now. Be it through more real prizes tournies or making PvP free-to-play. Ofcourse it still needs to be balanced etc, but more players, more win.

That's just the result of an all.... At first ( or even when rawr played) there were roughly the same amount of guilds from all levels....i can easily say the same for HA...
Today, there are for both formats only let's say good players left and you can see the 3 problems :
- eliteness isn't really a problem but a consequence... considering i will face good people only , most people will just ask themselves why should they take less exped players to face those? ( this of course loses all value when you have no choice because there is noone else to play with....)
- Not enough 'rookies' or mid exped players: they get facerolled by the same people over and over and can't learn a lot by keeping losing
- griefing and unfair situations : Halls map is best example... Almost everytime , you will see the same guild winning 1v1 halls because blue has an unfair advantage , and getting ganked on the first 3 way maps....

There is just a too high lack for competition incentive in the game , because of the high amount of reward you get anywhere for the small amount of skill
required

why is this needed to be brought up?...

the thread is about opening some pvp arena for free playing...which basically because there is not enough NEWBIE willing to learn...if there is never enough newbie willing to learn...no matter how many times you tell the newbie to learn..there will still never be enough games.

so opening it up to the public...meaning let the real elites come in...and owns the arena if they are capable...

at least for codex dead hour.. there will be games with real players, than sync bots.

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well partly agree.. but the recent strongbox update didn't really increase many pve players back to pvp.. because the whole gw base is kinked towards pve.... if the pve don't play pvp.. they will never play, even with 50 ectos a kill.......and it may just let the little pvp population harm the pve economy more if that is the case....

so why is there so little pvp population, because the base hate the current meta, and leaving only a small percentage of population that is the current pvp population struggles mostly with the never can be balanced meta play it...if the skill meta is not appealing...then a wider population has to be found to like the never can be balanced meta....the probability of players who like the bad meta will increase only if it is opened to a wider free population....or through reputation..

so I think a mutually exclusive elite pvp population with free to play is a better go ....

Offering free trials is marketing.
Offering free trials in pvp --> negative publicity.
This decision will affect GW1 & GW2 sales.

The point we differ on is - Why do you believe offering free trials in pvp in its current state is a positive?

lol...are you implying pvp in gw1 sucks?... if gw1 pvp sucks, the damage is done already.....opening to the public won't affect much... beside pvp in gw2 is totally different than in gw1 pvp..

if gw1 pvp doesn't suck, then why is it a negative publicity?...it is rather a positive publicity imho

so i don't know, some people may find the pvp good, but some people may find it bad.. it is not up for judgment until it is opened to a wider public..

but it is sucked now imo because there are not enough elite players who like the meta playing...

offering free trials, and opening pvp arena to the public can both be done at the same time...the current free trial can stay, and opening perhaps 250-500 free slots for a particular arena is just another good marketing strategy...

Thats not true, if people have the impression GW1 is rubbish it will affect GW2 sales.

No doubt some will find it good, some bad. However, its my opinion it will be biased towards the bad or negative experience for most.

I'd love to see a breath of fresh air put into pvp as much as anyone and recently there's been lots of suggestions thrown round to do this. With this idea, I don't think it will get the intended effect of +rep for Anet.

when something is free, it is + rep......

I don't think lol is better than HON...in any sense...until the "free" factor..which is a BIG + rep and ruling out the HON market

GW in the current game market to be honest.. is not really that bad..it doesn't has to be labelled as rubbish, you can hardly find another game that can compare with gw...but nonetheless just it needs more attention on the population problem, or wider attention..


does it affect gw2 sales at most? pvp in gw1 and gw2 are totally different story

For the majority of current players PvE is better then PvP. Having a free trial of PvP, imo, is not a good way to introduce ppl to GW. Ppl that are highly addicted to GW don't like PvP...lord knows if I got a free trial and my introduction to GW was PvP I wouldn't buy the PvE version. If I got a free PvE verison..I'd be better tempted to buy the PvP version ...not knowing any better.

it doesn't solve the problem of too little people in pvp if it is a free pve version...beside as I mentioned before...there of course limits on the free pvp in order for them to buy gw altogether....such as limiting the available free accessible slot if all those free accessible slot are filled.. and one want to join.. they will see they can't access and have to wait it out for the slot is emptied.

just like something.. "the free server is fulled...please wait awhile".. etc..

Yes, and that's like i said, because the only form of PvP playable for everyone ( read , where you can barely play on any hour( not GvG, not Codex, not AB)) is only about taking the most OP build for the format, pressing skills randomly till the target dies and that's all... And even better formats( if not deleted) have turned into a similar mode , with 0 tactics involved.... Games such as AC: Brotherhood are easily 10 times more fun and tactical to play

PvE is about the same , with less risks because people know they will get a reward for it , and won't have to deal with people's behaviour ( that's pretty fun how you can predict what's gonna happen sometimes....) towards time waits/loses/etc....

But well your argument fits to an other problem... a total beginner will obviously start with PvE anyway in most games... and it's even more true when you look at GW's PvP...

a true pvp player will see pve as dull....only plays pve is for the cosmetics item etc..but not the story line...you can judge by how fast a player skips a cut scene that never been seen before....

tbh most "true pvp players" play other pvp games.

yes.. cause partly the marketing and publicity of gw1 pvp are absent.

How much does the Trilogy cost now anyways? How much is one of the campaigns? Heck, isn't the PvP only kit like 10 or 20 dollars US? If it gets made free 2 play, all we will have is people with multiple FREE accounts that already play farming strongboxes. No thanks.

Yes, but you can't dive straight into competitive play with only the PvP unlock pack.

To get a fully ready account (all skills/items, which is a necessity if you want to properly engage in the game this late) costs:

5x skill packs at £6.99 ea
1x item pack at £6.99

So £41.94, i'd guess that's gonna cost about $60.

Assuming you bought a campaign or the trilogy/whatever else the PvP access kit's £13.99 (which is ridiculous imo).

If you bother with anything less than that your experience is most likely gonna be very sour (ignoring the fact that what's left of the community is pretty much a cesspit), which is not good for the game.

For comparison; the RRP for Starcraft II (a one year old, highly competitive game) costs £44.99 (although it's easy to obtain one for around £35).

This is one of the best suggestions IMO. The game is dead. Anet revenue streams from green gw players has dwindled. They could make PVP free to the public.

Due to the massive number of people who would join, they could perhaps even bring sacred and scarred and broken tower back into rotation. Yes the new guys will come into a slaughterhouse for the more experienced players but they will face enough noobies to keep them entertained. Freshies will have a chance to group and try builds and have fun. It would be like when GW first started. Right now at any one time, there are abt 10 teams in HA. This will become 100-200 teams overnight. The outcome will be that the new teams will be on even footing for most games and will fight a strong old school opponent every 10 games.

/signed 100x over.

requirement to farm strongbox with free account?

you need to sync the dummy team during the dead hour where there is no other players/team playing except your team...

how is it possible to farm strongbox, if there are 2 teams with the same mind of farming strongbox? they will face each other eventually, and it breaks the purpose of not fighting and just farm strongbox....

as long as there are people playing, farming strongbox will get harder..., farming strongbox is easy only when there are little players playing..

starcraft II is also a sales of development tools, "the custom map creator" but I don't think it was a success as to the publicity it should be getting...even if it is so much cheaper than gw1 pvp

there are less people playing in sc2 than lol...

the doom of a game is when there is no people remember there is/play such a game.....

publicity is important and the easiest way to make it out is to free a significant part of a game...

there are articles about pirating in the music industry actually increase it sales...because of all the easy publicity you can get.....bad publicity is better than no publicity

I think this is also a good experience/experiment as to how it will affect gw2 pvp...you see in gw2 there will also be this problem of not enough people playing the pvp.....if it didn't get it out..

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exactly the case, thats why you see people buying gw is for pve, but not the pvp...and which makes gw pvp dies...

I would like to clarify that I'm not actually in support of the OP.
However I would stronly support the idea of making it so the PvP Unlock Pack unlocked all skills and items for use in PvP. In its current state it's near valueless since a single campaign costs less and I think the unlock packs actually require a full campaign anyway.

if you buy a pvp unlock pack unlocked all skill cheaply with real cash etc, it may break the pve economies....because some of the purpose of pve is to unlock the pvp skills.... when you try to link it up
the skill tomes, the Balthazar flame, the balthazar faction, the skill quests, elite skill boss etc.

it will become something similar to using real money to buy ectos....

I think free out the codex arena with limited free slots can be a try, as you don' t need to buy the codex skills since they are automatically unlocked...and you still have a reason to buy the pvp access kits, skills, and item packs.

-----
if free out all the pvp arenas, then it is just like freeing the pvp access kits, but you still have to unlocks the skill, items etcs, it can also be a good marketing strategy for the skill and item packs....

but freeing the access kit can be a major first step to the door of pvp population.

It'll do bugger all to the economy; Balth Flames aren't used in trading at all. Tomes are unaffected, as are skill quests; these are all PvE concerns.

yep....but if you can choose from

1) free out pvp access kit, but remains unlock skill/item packs price
2) lower pvp access kit, lower unlocks skill/item packs price

I will choose the first option...

as it affects more on the player who can join the game, and affect less on the existing pve economies from the price of skill/items.

and note that, a person with the campaign can also buy the skill/item unlock packs, thats where it affects the pve economies.

good idea, bad thread

Some kind of limited F2P access would do some good to the game where lack of population hurts.

But it should be done in a way that encourages players to buy the campaigns or PvP packs.

Here is the problem. PvE'ers running their mouths in PvP concerns.

how about , make prophecies and pvp arenas free to play but with core skills only.

If you want other chapters and skills etc, spend the 30$ to buy them (its not allot in MOST countries). That will make the other players be free advertising (showcasing heroes, skills, armors, builds, other classes, conversation about stuff in other chapters etc). Even if those people never buy the full game the chances that they will buy GW2 increase by allot (vs them buying it without playing gw1)

that "fresh blood" might also increase the pvp population

the only places wher i see people in prophecies now is Lions arch, TOA and Ascalon for some odd reason.

disregarding you are actually freeing the whole prophecies campaign to try to attract potential faction/nightfall/other packs customer...the reason to buy prophecies is absent.

in pvp sense, players will only have interest to stay if they are in a fair position to compete...however I cannot make any judgment on whether only using the core skills is competitive enough for free players to have that interest to stay to compete in for example HA, where dervish is the meta now, i.e. the use of only core skills may not be enough as to make the free player feel fair, which may make them leave the arena altogether.

Furthermore, if f2p pve+pvp.. is getting into something like the 14 days free trial, it has the pve distraction factor that may not attract potential pvp population as effective as to only focusing on a f2p pvp arena, and not even to the point that more item storage and server burden has to be concerned.

nevertheless, opening pve+pvp f2p can has a promotional factor to the other campaigns, but it will not be enough to improve the pvp population.

therefore opening the codex arena f2p with limited access is the least problematic and have the necessary/desirable effect, which is a better option.

And that's where the problem is... Basically, there's the diference between people who keep facing " noobs" because there is noone else and people who go face "noobs" purposely for easy rewards... The kind of players left in most of PvP today is the second one( and i know what i'm saying since my whole ally is doing it ....)

Facing only those kind of players isn't really encouraging, especially if you consider you would need a lot of " fresh blood" to make those fight together...

I'm not going to say bring back HB, but except if they introduce a similar format( or maybe make AB better), people will hardly get interested long time in actual formats...( strongboxes did work a few weeks, but not many more players left now... )

through out the history of discussion about elitism in pvp, basically I learnt 1 simple thing, that is... pvp is not for pve players, FULL STOP.. how I learn that fact?

1) pvp is not a c space game, for noob to keep pressing and win
2) pvp is competitive, and it should be the case, if it is not competitive, that is having a winner, and a loser, how can it be called a pvp game? EVEN if it is c spacing, there are still winners and losers.
3) if you use a pve mind in pvp, you can go away already, because you are in the wrong game.
4) pve doesn't teach a player to lose, but pvp does..if a player lose, it basically means he/she is not competitive enough, and if he/she cannot take the lose, and try to win back in the competitiveness, he/she is absolutely a pve player, pvp is not suitable for them.
5) there are already too many pve players, and too little pvp players in gw, because too much emphasis had already been placed on pve, which all these elitism arguments favor only to pve player, keeps reducing pvp competitiveness, making pvp constantly shrinking in size, and finally the disappearance of true pvp players, gw need a lot more PVP players, not pve players for the pvp instead to maintain the market position.
6) unless you turn pvp into pve, pve player will never play the pvp, and keeps on bringing up the elitism argument, because they are not pvp players, if then the game will not be a pvp one anymore..
7) a true pvp thirst and hunger to vs as many elite, so as to learn any percentage from them as possible in all chance.

the suggestion I made to open codex arena free is to attract PVP players, not pve, pve already has the free trial in place..it is only a bonus for the 14 days free trial to find a pve player who happens also to be a true pvp player that has gone through all these pve distractions... which is uneasy.

so, if a player come into an arena, leave because of can't taking a lose, they are not a pvp player, and they can just go away, because pvp is not suitable for him/her..... only the one who stay are the true pvp players that are most needed in the current GW, and the "free" factor is the perfect factor to find these real pvp players from the outside of gw pve world...also it is very effective in doing so, because they have nothing to lose to come and have a trial.......

so what happen will be something like.. eg opening 500 slot, perhaps pve players come into and try the pvp, of course they will leave if they are only a pve player, you can ask them to go and try the 14 days free trial, but if he is a true pvp, he will just stay and take lose to try to win....since when the other can win, why can't they, if they have the same skill set, item, etc...this is PVP...not pve remember, don't even try to use pve mind in pvp.. period

I am actually more ready to see the outside "fresh blood' beat the crap out of the paid pve player who thinks they are veteran pvp players in the arena, since all left in gw now are the fake pvp pve players..

I'll be honest here and say I have no idea how your comment relates to what Missing HB said.

he said facing those kind of players isn't encouraging, and he tried to separate pro and noob which makes it into an elitism argument, but pro and noob are relative to the available player's skill pool.....

so I hate to say if pvp is not encouraging, then he is not a pvp player..cause a players must face another player in pvp, if he is saying facing another player is not encouraging then why he plays pvp?

but anyway, increasing the pvp population is the solution... and it is a very important lesson to gw2 pvp.

What you are saying.
People would join GW, go to HA/GvG, get smoked, eventually get better.

What he is saying (and everyone who is smart will agree).
Few select people will go farm the newbs till the newbs rage quit and don't ever return.
Maybe a flux of players for a month tops me thinks.

Could also see the potential to farm dead hours more with free pvp accounts.

1) I don't think is eventually get better, I think is beating the crap out of the existing pve based pvp...the free market is potentially more gigantic and stronger than what we have now....

2) farming dead hours more with free pvp accounts? how?
if there are 2 groups want to farm, it is impossible already..especially when there are more potential free accounts playing...I think it stops the farming effectively, besides the free accounts are non-trade-able with the paid account, or even unable to obtain any pve items, there is no reason for them to farm for pve items.

3) the people is saying that there will be no people using the free accounts actually play the game, is because they are using the pve eyes to see pvp with lack of confidence.... it can be scary that the epeeness in a closed world has blinded the people to the real world.....just like a rank 15 codex player who farm all his rank through syncing thinking he is the best pvp player...and I puked at this point.

From reading comments here and in the other thread I think what they are trying to say is "PvP is too complex for the simple minded PvE player". In their opinion the only place to gain more players, who can understand and deal with the complexities of PvP, is from outside the game.

not about too complex for the simple minded pve player, is just they shouldn't use the mind of pve to think in pvp, pvp is not something like playing pvp because want to farm the strongbox, farm the rank or farm the items, etc....as these are all only pve bonus happens in pvp

you play pvp is not for all the above, but a chance to vs another player...if you want to do a farm of the above, you are not playing a pvp game...

and most importantly, the amount of people who thinks in the pvp way is little in the current gw population.

opening the pvp to an audience who doesn't consider farmnig strongbox, farm rank or farm items are important, then that audience may have a better chance to really playing the game in a pvp game way.....which apparently there is not in the current gw,

you see codex arena, at first with the least rewards, there were no people...it was not about the rewards had been given out too little, it was about the pvp population is absent, this can be shown by an effective strongbox update should be able to move the pvper from the pve distraction back to pvp, but the fact showing there wasn't a significant pvp population increase from that, meaning the real pvp population hidden in the pve has gone away from the game altogether, which the strongbox update has effectively shown the pvp population is vanished, ....and what the strongbox also brought pve players into pvp who consider farming is important, what meaning is pver will not play pvp in the pvp way..FULL STOP

Thing is, like urania said somewhere, to have an active format, you need players from every level...Basically, have an active ladder that will give you an idea eventually....

All the lack of updates plus the introduction of easy rewards lead to 3 things :
- most serious players are fighting themselves( GvG only usually)
- a few minority of players( corresponding to mid-level, i can quote a few guilds, most are people who got their rank through bbway( read , they started HA'ing with bbway), you will then find who they are...) farming dead hours, abusing dead places for easy rewards

From this point of view( and i'm pretty sure it's true considering the number of times i was asked to come and do it ...), low exped players will only lose and basically almost never learn anything...

There should have been a format with no abusive or too easy reward, a similar kind of ladder for everyone as in Hero Battles which would work for teams ( the same way as in starcraft 2 if people know...).... Which is what Codex Arena was supposed to be at first....Too sad

So, the only way making PvP free to be a good idea would be if everyone played on the same hour on the same format... which won't be the case at all.... really, you don't know how people are when it's about getting an easy reward....

The idea is to give people a taste of Guild Wars alltogether. Yes prophecies + core skills are definetly not even close to enough, but.

GW player: hey buddy, come play this game with me but you gotta buy when the 14 day trial runs out.
Non Player: Nah......

or:

GW player: Hey, im playing this cool game that is free to play. You will also get a sneak peek of the payed content and if you like it you can buy it all for 30$.

The second scenario i mentioned above is allot more likely to have the new person playing the game. If they dont like it, they will not play it regardless of if it is free or p2p. But this might give the game more of a welcoming to new players allure then our 14 day trial. Once these new players join, decide they like it and end up buying the rest, they will distribute themselves in the content according to preference. but the pvp population will not increase without a significant increase in "fresh blood".

If the entire pvp content ONLY will become free, we will see nothing there but 13 years old kids or people who try it, and since they dont know about the basic game mechanics, quit after a few rounds saying "this is retarded im gonna go back to Dota."

You know why people spend money on the free korean games? because they are free when they start. They start, get addicted and later after there is allot of time and effort invested on the toon, they want to be competitive. But at some point in those games you cant be competitive if you don't spend money. People start spending money to upgrade, its a never ending pocket drain. But they START those games because there free and nobody is forcing you to pay, so they subconsciously think they will be able to get around the bills. When they get to the point you need to spend to advance, there hooked and they dont care.

This would be a better option, a guaranteed one time charge that gives you an open pass to compete on all levels you want.

forgot to mention also that most gamers travel in packs. Meaning that if one likes a game he will ask his friends to play it. Allot more likley they will start when he tells its free. As example, I know in Lineage 2 there is a horde of players startved for PvP because they cannot get any. They like to PvE as well, but they jump on every slight opportunity of PvP. I will not go into details why, too long to explain. if ONE of them comes here and likes the game, he WILL try the PvP. Then he will end up calling all of his other starved friends over.

the word "FREE" does magical things to a human mind, even if the "FREE" includes very little